Hi Kloud Nine,
A thought has just occurred to me, if you have a screened ignition distributor in your K9, it may well have an arrow showing rotation on it, these distributors were fitted in other engines during 1940's and 50's with differing rotations. I have heard of engines with the wrong rotation distributors fitted and performance is obviously poor, maybe this is the problem with yours. The original K9 engine should be CW rotation of distributor. If you can find the tag on the screened distributor with Lucas number, I can identify it.
regards, Richard